Announcing the May 21 TweetMeet on ‘Inclusive classrooms and accessibility.’

Change starts with awareness. Every third Tuesday of May is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about people with different abilities and their accessibility and inclusion in a digital world.

Our mission is to empower every student on the planet to achieve more, which stems from the belief that every student deserves the opportunity to fulfill their potential.

In this edition of our monthly global and multilingual Twitter conversations, we’ll discuss ways in which educators around the world make inclusion and accessibility an integrated part of their classrooms.

Keep reading for detailed information about this TweetMeet.

Language tracks and SuperSway

We offer seven simultaneous language tracks this month: English, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Swedish and Vietnamese. The new SuperSway offers a TweetMeet Invitation in each of these languages.

For each language track, we have one or more hosts to post the translated questions and respond to educators. As always, we’re super grateful to all current and former hosts who are collaborating closely to provide this service.

The #TweetMeetXX hashtags for non-English languages are to be used together with #MSFTEduChat so that everyone can find the conversations back in their own language. For example: Spanish-speaking people should use both #TweetMeetES #MSFTEduChat. English-speaking educators may use #MSFTEduChat on its own.

TweetMeet Fan? Show it off on your Twitter profile!

Every month more and more people discover the unique flow and characteristics of the TweetMeet events and become excited to participate.

Show your passion for the TweetMeets right from your own Twitter page by uploading this month’s#MSFTEduChat Twitter Header Photo to the top of your own Twitter profile.

In the same file folder, the Twitter Header Photo is available in many other languages and time zones.

Looking back on the April TweetMeet on ‘Teaching Happiness’

The April #MSFTEduChat TweetMeet inspired educators around the world to share ideas, insights and resources. We captured highlights from this Twitter conversation in this @MicrosoftEDU Twitter Moment.

Why join the #MSFTEduChat TweetMeets?

TweetMeets are monthly recurring Twitter conversations about themes relevant to educators, facilitated by Microsoft Education. The purpose of these events is to help professionals in education to learn from each other and inspire their students while they are preparing for their future. The TweetMeets also nurture personal learning networks among educators from across the globe.

We’re grateful to have a support group made up exclusively of former TweetMeet hosts, who volunteer to translate communication and check the quality of our questions and promotional materials. They also help identify the best candidates for future events, provide relevant resources, promote the events among their networks and, in general, cheer everybody on.

Our next recommendation for you is to set up Twitter dashboard TweetDeck and add a column for the hashtag #MSFTEduChat. If you are new to TweetDeck, then check out this brief TweetDeck video tutorial by Marjolein Hoekstra.

When a tweet appears that you want to respond to, press the retweet button and type your comments. Great news is that Twitter now supports adding images, animated GIFs and videos to your comment retweets.

Additional tips are offered in this animated GIF that you’re most welcome to share with newcomers:

Too busy to join at event time? No problem!

From our monthly surveys we know that you may be in class at event time, busy doing other things or may even be asleep–well, no problem! All educators are welcome to join any time after the event. Simply look at the questions below and respond to these at a day and time that suit you best.

You can also schedule your tweets in advance. In that case, be sure to include the entire question in your tweet and mention the hashtag #MSFTEduChat so that everyone knows to which question in which conversation you are responding.

The exact question timings are in this helpful graphic:

Resources to help prepare for the TweetMeet

Microsoft Education offers a wide range of tools, professional-development courses and learning paths about inclusion and accessibility. These resources are tailored for educators and they are all free. Good places to start are:

Wakelet is a useful web service to bookmark, curate and annotate resources, images, tweets and other content. Mike Tholfsen just created this Wakelet Collection as a handy reference. It currently has 40+ pointers:

Flipgrid

Our hosts are thrilled for the upcoming TweetMeet. Each of them wants to invite you to the event in their own way.

Next month’s event: Microsoft Teams

The theme of next month’s Tweetmeet on June 18th will be Microsoft Teams. We’re looking forward to this event and hope you’ll spread the word!

What are #MSFTEduChat TweetMeets?

Every month Microsoft Education organizes social events on Twitter targeted at educators globally. The hashtag we use is #MSFTEduChat. A team of topic specialists and international MIE Expert teachers prepare and host these TweetMeets together. Our team of educator hosts first crafts several questions around a certain topic. Then, before the event, they share these questions on social media. Combined with a range of resources, a blog post and background information about the events, this allows all participants to prepare themselves to the full. Afterwards we make an archive available of the most notable tweets and resources shared during the event.

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